As young adults my siblings left the Church condemning it for its perceived hypocrisy and repressive teaching on sex. “Why do you stay?” they ask. It is a challenging question in the face of my own struggle with the Church’s pervasive clericalism. But I have been born and baptised into a Church that has formed and continues to nourish me with its rich spiritual, scriptural, theological and liturgical heritage. I cannot leave.

Others have asked the opposite question. “Why don’t you go?” was put to me by some angry participants at a workshop we ran on women’s participation in the Church. This group was offended because I didn’t “look like a nun” and dared to discuss barriers to women’s participation. I in turn was affronted by their “if you don’t like it, get out” taunt.

Soon after, I came across Carlo Carretto’s ‘love letter’ to the Church.

“How much I must criticise you, my Church and yet how much I love you! You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness.”

Carretto’s words continue to be a source of deep comfort. Like him, if I were to leave the Church where should I go?

“To build another Church?But I cannot build another Church without the same defects, for they are my own defects.And again, if I were to build another Church, it would be my Church, not Christ’s Church.”

So I don’t go. I stay. But how do I stay especially when I am hurt and angered by some unhealthy systems within the institutional Church which preclude transparency and mutuality.